


imprisoned in bones, nerves, flesh, veins, and skin

by quadrille



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: Body Dysphoria, F/M, Gen, Gyms, One Shot, Sleeves, Sparring, Unresolved Sexual Tension, readjustment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 02:48:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14275263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: Readjusting to a new sleeve after 250 years is rough.





	imprisoned in bones, nerves, flesh, veins, and skin

**Author's Note:**

> Set early in the first season, sorta between 1x1 and 1x2. I’ve only seen the show, not read the books. Title is a translated line from the [Book of Enoch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch).

This new body goes against one of Takeshi’s trademarks. He prefers Asian sleeves, as a familiar anchor by which to remember himself — but instead, this white man is a looming leggy 6’2”, cut with European features, and it makes him frown into the cracked, splintered mirror.

It gives him that sense of something alien crammed into a slippery skin that isn’t his own. That initial adjustment sits wrong like an ill-fitting suit, all tight in the shoulders and loose in the legs. He makes faces at himself in the mirror and watches the muscles of the other man’s cheeks move, feeling the nerves slide like eels, a foreign mask settled over his bones.

He’s restless and jittering with pent-up energy and accumulated hormones. He needs to fight or fuck, or both; he can’t quite decide. At least he’s shucked his blood-stained clothes from the fight in the lobby — Poe delicately picked them up and swept them away to be cleaned, returned pristine and folded and pressed, with a sachet of fake cedar laid between the fabric. Kovacs shrugs into the white shirt and tries not to feel too charmed by the AI’s attentiveness.

So, then: he goes walking.

The man eventually finds his way to a dojo near Fell Street and saunters in like he owns the place, emerging from the men’s locker room after stripping down to a wifebeater and workout pants. The place is teeming with off-duty cops and smells of stale sweat, cold metal, rubber, disinfectant. 

And true to form, when Kristin Ortega sees him, her face darkens with fury. She marches over, seizes his arm (she’s never been afraid of him, despite his reputation), and pulls him over to the side of the room.

“This is _my_ gym,” she says, teeth clenched. “What the hell are you doing here?”

His gaze slips to the side, to a memorial photograph on the wall bearing a face with a familiar name.

“It’s a free country,” Kovacs says, despite the fact that it absolutely isn’t. “C’mon. I need the practice, need to wake this sleeve up. Help a guy out?”

The detective’s jaw sets stubbornly. She tightens the wraps on her knuckles, winding them closely around her fingers, flexes her clenched fist.

“Fine.”

Half an hour later, he’s realising he probably shouldn’t antagonise this woman _too_ much (though he enjoys doing it). Her fast-flying fists carry a stinging punch and she’s brutally efficient. Ortega is small, a pint-sized demon, but she’s fast on her feet and possibly even angrier than he is (which sure is saying something). She seems to know her way around his sleeve better than he does — a fist driving the breath out of him, a blow to the back of the knee dropping him to the floor.

He’s still warming up his envoy instincts. This spar is for a good cause: the sleeve’s reflexes have been surgically enhanced until they balance on a hair-trigger, but he still needs practice steering the vessel. He needs to learn the ins and outs of this particular body: how far his reach is, how far a kick can go, how to compensate for his shifted center of gravity. He keeps tipping too far forward, too-accustomed to his last sleeve even if it’s 250 years removed. He needs to readjust for those extra inches of height.

She slams him to the mat again, follows him down with a knee pressed against his stomach. With Ortega settled snugly over his hips he can suddenly feel the stirring of desire, embarrassingly uncontrollable, involuntary. 

So Kovacs flips her before she can notice, pinning the woman to the mat then bouncing swiftly back to his feet, retreating.

He’s always prided himself on his self-control — he’s supposed to be the one in the driver’s seat, not this goddamned flesh, this _meat._ But the sleeve is steering now, which is fucking infuriating and leaves him annoyed with his own limitations. Weaknesses. He really needs to get this taken care of. Ortega didn’t accept his proposition last night, and Dimi the Twin interrupted his intended sampling of The Raven’s wares.

(This helplessness reminds him of the sleeve’s nicotine addiction, which is another irritant. Kovacs hates the smell but usually winds up chainsmoking anyway, finding himself palming another cigarette and unconsciously lighting it; not from really wanting to, but because his hands remember how.)

There’s a useless energy buzzing in his fingertips and the soles of his bare feet as he eyes Ortega across the practice mats.

“So. You sure you don’t want to work up a sweat some other way?” he offers again, with a crooked grin.

She rolls her eyes. “You’re disgusting.”

Kovacs shrugs. “Never pretended otherwise.”

But he can tell that Ortega’s gaze lingers on the curve of his jaw, his exposed throat and collarbone in the undershirt. The barely-healed cut over one eye, the split skin over his nose. He can read attraction in the self-conscious way she looks at him (or doesn’t), and yet — she’s holding off. She’s got better self-control than he does. He wonders if that’s just how she is, or if there’s something he’s missing here; he wonders what she’d be like unpinned and untethered and coming apart at the seams, against a wall, underneath him.

Christ, he really needs to deal with this.

Kovacs grabs a towel from a bench on the side and wipes some of the sweat out of his eyes. “I gotta get back to work,” he says, and abruptly heads for the locker room, leaving Ortega massaging her knuckles and watching him go, curiously. He should take a shower here at the gym, but he wants — needs — to get away from her as soon as possible, before this sleeve betrays him any more than it already has.

So he goes out on the streets and walks until he can’t feel his legs anymore, walks until he reaches The Raven and walks in on Poe’s quizzical, polite smile, and he takes the world’s hottest shower until it feels like he’s scouring his flesh from his bones, this stupid fucking helpless flesh.

His fingers are already twitching as soon as he steps out of the shower, itching for yet another cigarette, and he sighs. After only the slightest pause, Kovacs dials Poe to conjure up a night of virtual delights after all.

Might as well put that on Bancroft’s tab, too.


End file.
